Murder on the Bluffs, book two from A Lauren Rousseau Mystery series by Edith Maxwell, is a fabulous suspense filled read. I thought it was great. Five stars.

A very engaging read and it held my interest throughout.   I wasn’t aware that this was a series, but it didn't interrupt the flow of the book.

Our protagonist is Lauren a PHD doctor of linguistics who is a tenured professor. She has close relationships with her Mother and her sister. Lauren is a dedicated follower of the Quaker Faith as was her Father who has passed on. Laurent was hoping that her relationship pressure of her boyfriend would be on hold after he leaves for a few weeks . She likes her independence and does not want to move forward with him. She has been under scrutiny with the town since previously finding a body and helping solve the murder. When she once again finds a dead body of a man she had words with she must solve the mystery of his death to both clear her own name and find the suspect. She had good friends that assist her in her inquiries and I like the smart savvy way she goes about finding clues.

Search For Truth....
Book two in the Lauren Rousseau mystery series and a gruesome murder gives a Lauren, linguistic professor, cause for consternation and she begins to search for the truth. A well plotted mystery with many threads and, whilst still difficult to warm to our protagonist, an engaging read.

I enjoy books by this author. It held my interest all the way through and I would recommend it to others

Review delayed for long fire evacuation. 

Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity to read this fine mystery for review. My review opinions are my own.  Murder On The Bluffs is the second installment in the Lauren Rousseau Mystery series by popular award winning cozy author Edith Maxwell. I have read the first in series and was immediately drawn  to the series.  I love the beautiful covers on this series which give the reader clues into the pending mystery., The charcters are all interesting and likable . The sleuth was well crafted to conclusion and kept me guessing throughout.  I particularly like that our protagonist is a independent woman of strong faith with a career in a unusual field. 

Our protagonist is  Lauren a PHD doctor of linguistics who is a tenured professor.  She has close relationships with her Mother and her sister. Lauren is a dedicated follower of the Quaker Faith as was her Father who has passed on. Laurent was hoping that her relationship pressure of her boyfriend would be on hold after he leaves for a few weeks .  She likes her independence and does not want to move forward with him.  She has been under scrutiny with the town  since previously finding a body and helping solve the murder.  When she once again finds a dead body of a man she had words with  she must solve the mystery of his death to both clear her own name and find the suspect.  She had good friends that assist her in her inquiries and I like the smart savvy way she goes about finding clues. 

This was such a fun enjoyable mystery.  I look forward to the next in series and hope this will be a long running cozy series. Very well done to the author !  My review is delayed due to fire evacuation .

Lauren Rousseau is a professor of linguistics and this is her second outing as a detective.  This is the first of her adventures which I have read and it works perfectly well as a standalone novel. In the small town in New England where Lauren lives, there is a secretive land trust which is creating a lot of bad feeling in the town. Lauren finds the body of one of the key conspirators with his throat cut and now with a well populated list of suspects, she sets out to find what's going on.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, it's complex enough to keep you guessing but not full of repulsive descriptions to keep you awake at night! Right up my street, having enjoyed  Edith Maxwell's second Lauren Rousseau case, I may well go back and read her first adventure. Recommended.

I really enjoyed this book. I think the characters are developing nicely and the mystery was solid. I'm enjoying the fact that Lauren has a job not common in mysteries (linguistic professor) and a religion ( Quaker) n which isn't common either. I definitely will be on the lookout for book 3 in this series. And, did I mention the gorgeous cover?!

When I started reading this I didn’t realize that it is the second book in a series but it didn’t matter. This works well as a stand alone. The main character was well developed and I liked the small town New England setting. I also found it interesting that the main character is a Quaker since That’s not a religion that I’m very familiar with.

This is the second book in this series and I must say that it is even better than the first. The characters are even more fleshed out with more depth of personality than the first and they were good in the first book. In this book our main character, Lauren is pushed to find the truth when she once again stumbles over a dead body and once again finds herself in the eye of the storm during the investigation. The plot is well woven with a field of potential suspects that all seem implausible yet, perfect for the crime. Once again her intelligence and curiosity shines through the plot and you find yourself cheering her on albeit wondering how she manages to stay alive with so many near misses. I definitely can't wait to see where the next book twists and turns too!

Murder on the Bluffs by Edith Maxwell is another in the Lauren Rousseau modern series about a doctor of linguistics who has followed the faith of her dead father and become a Quaker. She is still recovering from the mess her friend, Elise, who is rehab, was part of a month or two earlier and has just sent her boyfriend, Zac, home to Haiti for a couple of months. She is looking forward to the breather from Zac, who is pressuring her to become more serious in their relationship, and to her summer vacation from teaching classes at Agawam College, although she still has plenty to do.  One of the many things on her list is to restart karate, which she had practiced years before when she had lived in Japan. Now she had the time. Out for her run, the worst thing happens. She discovers a body. . . the body of the insurance agent with who she had had a run-in just yesterday. Not an auspicious start to her summer. Not at all. It seems to open up a whole can of worms for her and for several other people in won, as well. 

Lauren is a 35-year-old tenured college professor. She is well-respected, if a little immature. She is definitely afraid of commitment, hence her current situation with Zac, and how there was this really hot karate sensei. It was nearing the anniversary of her father's death and that always brought forth a lot of angst. Maybe she'd ask her mother again, what brought it all on. Needless to say, a great many people are curious as to how Lauren has found another body. Most people never run across dead bodies, and her she has, several, in as many months. She maintains and close relationship with both her mother and the sister who lives locally. She has good friends, Iris, for example, who runs the local bakery. She just has developed this unfortunate knack. Good book. Good story. Good character. Missed Zac. He is extremely entertaining. I'm sure he'll be back, at least temporarily. I enjoyed it. I recommend it.

I was invited to read a free ARC of Murder on the Bluffs by Netgalley. All opinions and interpretations contained herein are solely my own. #netgalley #murderonthebluffs

Lauren Rousseau is a professor of linguistics and a Quaker who seems to find herself involved in murders.  Having earned tenure, Lauren is looking forward to an actual summer vacation, but plans go awry when her boyfriend leaves town earlier than expected and she stumbles across a body in the woods during a run.  Lauren gets sucked into local politics and finds out more than she expects about many of her neighbors.

An intricate storyline will keep you hooked until the end.  These books were originally published under the pen name Tace Baker; I hope the re-release of books 1 and 2 mean that there are upcoming adventures with Lauren.

I accessed a digital ARC via NetGalley.

Having read the first in the series I approached the second with a little hesitation because I did not find the main character especially interesting. Only a few months after her first murder event she finds herself in the midst of a second and, again, a potential suspect. She flaps around rather trying to sort out the events, her apparent boyfriend heads off to family, she does a bit of academic work, bumbles around some more and generally gets less interesting as time goes on I'm afraid. The "bad guy" was apparent from his first appearance and his reasoning is just unpleasant. The fact that our heroine is Quaker, something we are reminded about all too often, adds little to the story especially as her treatment of boyfriend etc is hardly a shining example to the creed. My hesitation grew as I read on. Thanks to NetGalley and Beyond the Page publishing for an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

What a great summer read! Loved this book! So much fun and so engaging. I loved all of the characters. They definitely were full of personality. I will without a doubt recommend this book to friend.s.

The second in the Lauren Rousseau series. Lauren finds a body, Charles Heard, while out for a run. Mr Heard is the one of the trustees of a large local land trust which was required to give money to local schools.  This hasn’t happened as it was required.  Lauren has a public disagreement with the man and becomes one of the murder suspects.
I noticed lots of growth of the main characters between book 1 and this book.  I felt the mystery was a little weak.

I was given an advanced reader’s copy from Netgalley. I am not required to leave a positive review.

Linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau returns in Murder on the Bluffs, the second in a new series that also works as a standalone mystery. 

Now that the semester has ended, Lauren plans to explore her small hometown. However, after she confronts her insurance agent over a bill, she discovers his body while she’s out on a run. Although she’s not a suspect, she begins her own investigation. The man was a member of the mysterious Bluffs Land Trust that collects profits from land rentals. These profits are supposed to be turned over to the town’s school system but that has not happened for years. Another complication is that the members of the Land Trust are all men who have inherited their seats. Coincidentally, one is Lauren’s Karate teacher whom she is very attracted to while her boyfriend is out of the country. Her father’s disappearance and death while she was in college are also on her mind. Could there be a connection?

I love the Lauren Rousseau series. It has so much going for it. There are the usual quirky characters, family problems, interesting careers, locations that switch between a beachside town and a college campus and typical small town intrigue. The problem here is that Lauren seems a bit out of character. The story starts with an argument that seems over the top for Lauren. Then, days after her boyfriend leaves for Haiti, she is fantasizing about her Karate teacher. I am really looking forward to the third in this series and hoping that then Lauren will decide if she wants to be a committed relationship. 4 stars.

Thanks to Netgalley, Beyond the Page Publishing and Edith Maxwell for this ARC.

Linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau learns about a long-simmering controversy involving a secretive local land trust.  Instead of providing money to the local schools as required, the Trustees had been withholding the money for years.  After a heated town meeting, Lauren stumbles upon the body of Charles Heard, one of the Trustees, while hiking on the local bluffs.   Lauren starts asking questions and quickly learns that Heard had many enemies but which one hated him enough to kill? Heard's volatile sister Mary wants answers but is also hiding some secrets of her own.  

Meanwhile, as the anniversary of her late father's birthday approaches, Lauren is determined to find out more details about his death from her reticent family.  But Lauren did not expect the bombshell truth about why he abruptly left the family.  

Lauren then finds another injured man near the bluffs after going clamming with her new karate instructor Dan Talbot.  Who attacked Danny Spirokis?  As Lauren investigates the remaining Trustees, she realizes there may be a link between their corrupt actions and the death of her father. After another close call at a train station in Boston, Lauren inadvertently finds herself alone with the killer and has to use her wits to escape.

I received an eARC from Netgalley and Beyond the Page Publishing with no requirements for a review.  I voluntarily read this book and provided this review.

This was so disappointing.

I went from loving Lauren in the last book to wondering why she became so stupid and self centered. The first book, she was looking for a killer while keeping the police in the loop. In this one, she keeps stumbling around and gets into arguments with them. 

The killer was very obvious. There weren't that many suspects and this guy was so suspicious. Every time he appeared, he became more suspicious. Not that Lauren ever suspects him. She's trying to cheat on her boyfriend who she treated worse than last book when she did cheat on him and was wishy-washy about their future together. In my last review, I said I wanted a revival of this series. I changed my mind.

This review is based on an advanced reading copy provided by Netgalley for an honest review.

This is the second installment in the Lauren Rousseau mystery series about a linguistics professor who finds herself stumbling across murdered bodies. I would consider this a cozy mystery, as not too many gory details are given about the murders, the story is set in a quaint picturesque town, and there are interesting side characters. I enjoyed this book more than the first in the series as I began to warm to the main character. 

In Murder On the Bluffs, the book opens with Lauren having an altercation at the bank with one of the bank's officers, then later that day while on a run she discovers his body. He has been murdered. He was not a particularly popular man so there is no shortage of possibilities for who could be the murderer. Meanwhile Lauren's personal life is still complicated. Her long time boyfriend is off on an extended trip, and she thinks she might be interested in Dan, her martial arts instructor. The pace of the book is pretty quick as the mystery unfolds. New clues lead Lauren in various directions before solving the murder. More is revealed about Lauren's family and friends in town.

There is a lot to like about the story, with some interesting characters and setting. I'm still on the fence as to whether I am totally engaged in the series, and I would rate this a 3.5. Rounding up to 4 because I feel it shows promise.

I received this ARC via Netgalley and Beyond the Page Publishing, in return for an honest review. While the second book in this series, it is easily read as a standalone.  Lauren Rousseau, PhD in Linguistics and newly tenured professor at a small college, is frustrated when she has a negative encounter with one of the town’s big wigs, which is witnessed by the chief of police.  When she finds the man dead on the local sea bluffs, Lauren is thrust into town intrigues about a significant land trust, the cabal of trustees and secrets that impact her own family.  Not quite sure who to trust beyond her mother and sister, Lauren realize that these are mysteries she needs to solve or die trying.  I enjoyed this book.  It’s a solid cozy mystery and Ms. Maxwell’s expertise in the genre is obvious.